Sylvain Sylvain of the New York Dolls is remembering Johnny Thunders, the man who used to stand beside him on the stages of Manhattan's clubs, playing lead guitar while Sylvain pounded out the rhythm chords. "Heroin destroyed everything for the Dolls," he says, sombrely. "Heroin and needles killed my band. Johnny was a junkie from the first time he ever used. He got married to heroin and it's a fucking shame because he was the best songwriter I ever met.

"I see a lot of Johnny in that kid Pete Doherty. He's a great talent. When I first heard one of his songs, Fuck Forever, I thought, 'Man, that is the most romantic thing I've ever heard a man say to a woman.' But heroin will take him away from the songs just like Johnny, because she is a bitch, and that's what she does."

Sylvain knows that first-hand. The Dolls were torn apart 31 years ago by the heroin addictions of Thunders and drummer Jerry Nolan. As if the drugs weren't enough, the Dolls' place in rock mythology - partly as trailblazers of punk, partly as rock's most tragedy-stricken band - has been secured by the premature deaths of no fewer than four members. Original drummer Billy Murcia died, insensible from drugs and drink, at a party in London when the then unsigned Dolls had come over to support Rod Stewart's Faces in 1972. Thunders died of an overdose in New Orleans in 1991. His heroin buddy, Nolan, succumbed to meningitis in 1992. Saddest of all, the band's bassist, Arthur "Killer" Kane, died of leukaemia, just two weeks after the band reformed for the 2003 Meltdown festival. "He waited his entire life for the Dolls to reform," notes Sylvain. "He was a sweetheart. He died happy."

Now, 32 years after their last record, with just two original members surviving - Sylvain and singer David Johansen - the Dolls are back with an extraordinary third album. "How have we done that? Luckily, I'm a fucking genius," Johansen growls, in a voice rendered basso profundo by four decades of dedicated smoking. There's a pause, and an immaculately raised eyebrow. "Savant, of course."

Johansen's insouciance is entirely forgivable. The New York Dolls occupy a storied niche in rock history. Back in 1973, the five-piece made an eponymous debut album that is widely regarded as the Year Zero of punk rock. Wrapped in a then shocking cover featuring the band in drag, it was a seductive riot of lewd hard rock, glam posturing, girl group plunderings, and a bad attitude that verged on pathological.

The New York hipsters loved the record. But no one else in America felt the same and it didn't sell. Nor did 1974's follow-up Too Much Too Soon. In early 1975, with their erratic career in meltdown, the Dolls hired a young Brit named Malcolm McLaren as their manager. He took them out of New York to play in Florida - where the main concern of Thunders and Nolan, separated from their dealers, was how to score heroin - dressed them in red patent leather and rebranded them as communists waving a red flag. "We forgot the Vietnam war was still on," grimaces Sylvain. "Our timing was kamikaze. Then after the Dolls split, Malcolm wrote me a long letter from London begging me to join the Sex Pistols. He told me the Pistols was my band, and said 'We've found this kid and we're thinking of calling him Johnny Rotten. He can't sing, but he definitely sings better than Johansen.'"

And their legend would have ended there had it not been for Morrissey. As a teenager, he had been president of the band's UK fan club and three years ago, he invited them to play at the Royal Festival Hall in London as part of Meltdown. To general amazement, they accepted.

"We had been approached so many times before by people asking us to tour, but they were always such stubby-fingered vulgarians," explains Johansen. "With Morrissey, it was different. We had such good fun playing at Meltdown that we toured a few festivals, started writing songs at soundchecks, and suddenly - whaddya know? We'd made an album!"

The record in question is one of the great, unlikely rock comebacks. One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This is prime gonzo rock as louche and vibrant as the Dolls were more than 30 years ago. Tellingly, New York Dolls now have a potent new weapon to hand. In contrast to the rudimentary thrashings of the 1970s, when every song sounded constantly on the verge of falling apart, they now know their way around a fretboard.

"Well, I think this album falls apart as well, but in all the right places," demurs Johansen. "It's a rock'n'roll record, and not a lot of people make rock'n'roll records today. They make weird marching music, or Hitler Youth rally music." There's a drag on a cigarette, and a sigh. "Sheesh, there are some fucked-up records out there."

Johansen and Sylvain make quite a double act. Where Johansen affects a Zen indifference towards the Dolls' prodigious musical legacy, Sylvain admits he has always longed to return and exploit their reputation. "I've been begging David to put the Dolls back together for years," he says. "Partly because I needed the damn bucks. Since we split I've played music, worked in fashion, done what I could to get by. I even drove a cab in New York City to pay the rent. I got robbed three times. Once was by a woman.

"But I've always known exactly how much New York Dolls meant. I've never forgotten. In 1971 we were at the horse race, and we were way ahead of the pack. Before us, there was nothing. The New York Dolls spawned everything that came out of New York City in the 1970s. The Ramones, Television, Blondie, Patti Smith - all of those guys were inspired by us."

Some of those debts are repaid on One Day It Will Please Us to Remember This. Michael Stipe and Iggy Pop both make cameo appearances, testimony to a legacy that stretches far beyond the Dolls' meagre recorded output.

Johansen, however, remains serenely unfazed by the long shadow that his band cast over rock history. "I always read that we influenced punk and we influenced hair metal, and those two camps seem to me to be diametrically opposed," he marvels. "It's like claiming we spawned both Cain and Abel. Fuck, the only thing that hair metal bands were ever good for was laughing at MTV with the sound turned off. The Dolls looked glam but we sounded good too, and we got into plenty of shit for it. When we played in Memphis, I got dragged off the stage by the police and thrown in handcuffs. As we drove down Elvis Presley Boulevard in a police car, I asked them what I was being arrested for, and they said, 'Female impersonation.' That was no big deal. Shit like that used to happen to us all the time."

And what is the Dolls' motivation for their return? To reclaim their legacy? To secure a place in history? For Johansen, it's something more prosaic. "When the New York Dolls split, we were essentially run out of town on a rail," he reflects through one last cigarette fug. "So this time around I just want to enjoy it and have a few laughs. And let me assure you, I am having more fun being back in the New York Dolls right now than anybody can even begin to fucking imagine."